1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to a call center system for receiving phone calls. More particularly, the present invention relates to balanced distribution of loads to receive incoming call among operators working at the call center system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been increasing the number of enterprises each setting a call center system for receiving phone calls for, among other purposes, improvement of services to give a fast response to an inquiry about a product and improvement of an efficiency to take up an order. In such an environment, most of such enterprises each employ a fixed number of operators for receiving incoming calls, the number of which varies from day to day and even varies hourly in a day. A call center system basically comprises an exchange installed in a building, an ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) apparatus functioning as an incoming-call control unit and a plurality of clients (or terminals) each provided with a function used by an operator to have a voice conversation with a customer making an inquiry about a product or placing an order for a product. The clients are connected to a telephone line by the exchange, which is also referred to as a local exchange. The ACD apparatus is an incoming-call control apparatus used for connecting an incoming call made by a customer to one of the clients in a state of being able to receive an incoming call in rendering a service of responding to an inquiry or service of taking in an order. A client connected to the incoming call creates information on a database in response to the call after or during the call. If an incoming call cannot be responded due to the fact that all the clients are busy, the ACD apparatus displays status of the waiting incoming calls. An operator aware of the displayed status may suspend an operation to create information to be transmitted to a database, record only essentials of the information on a piece of paper and use the memo recorded on the paper later in resumption of the suspended operation to complete the information. As an alternative, the newly incoming call is put in a state of waiting for an operator to become available after completion of an operation to create information to be transmitted as a response.
However, this conventional call center system has the following problems. When the operator records essentials of pending information to be transmitted as a response to the previous incoming call on a piece of paper due to a suspension of an operation to create the information in the event of a newly incoming call unanswered because of the fact that all the clients are busy, a customer making the call is inevitably put in a wait state. In this case, the operator may record the essentials in a hurry and, thus, the essentials are not recorded correctly. If the incorrect essentials are used later for completing the pending information to be transmitted as a response to the previous incoming call, the completed information is also wrong as well. If the newly incoming call is put in a wait state, on the other hand, there is raised a problem of a poor service inevitably putting a customer making the newly incoming call in a wait state till completion of an ongoing operation to create information to be transmitted as a response to the previous incoming call and a poor service caused by an inability to give a fast response to a customer making this newly incoming call.
It is thus an object of the present invention addressing the problems described above to provide a call center system that is capable of fully satisfying customers at a high performance wherein a fixed number of operators operating clients employed in the call center system is capable of responding to incoming calls at the maximum of ability and the operation can be carried out with a high degree of flexibility to keep up with a fluctuating number of incoming calls arriving at the same time.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a call center system used for receiving incoming calls and composed of a plurality of terminals; an incoming-call control apparatus for executing incoming-call control based on status of the terminals and for informing the terminals of existence of waiting incoming calls; and an exchange for informing the incoming-call control apparatus of the arrival of an incoming call from an external source such as a public network, wherein the terminals are accommodated by the exchange and each comprise a display unit as well as a telephone unit; an audio recording and playback means for recording voices of a conversation between an operator operating the terminal and a caller making a call in a conversation-voice recording file and for playing back voices from the conversation-voice recording file; a response-information-creating means for creating a response based on the contents of a conversation to an incoming call; a halfway-saving and saving means for saving a halfway response being created in a halfway-response recording file and for saving a completed response in a response recording file in accordance with a command given by the operator; a saved-halfway-response-reading means for reading out the halfway-response recording file containing a halfway response being created in accordance with a command given by the operator; a saved-halfway-response-display means for displaying a halfway response stored in the halfway-response recording file read out by the saved-halfway-response-reading means on the display unit; and a status-notifying means for reporting status of being able or unable to receive an incoming call to the incoming-call control apparatus in accordance with a command given by the operator.
It is desirable to further provide each of the terminals with a command means such as a mouse in the display unit; a waiting-call display means-for displaying waiting status of an incoming call, which is reported by the incoming-call control apparatus in case the incoming call cannot be routed to any of the terminals, on the display unit; and a halfway saving operation screen control means operating in accordance with selection of an item from a halfway saving operation screen by clicking the command means as a request to save a halfway response in a halfway-response recording file and selection of an item from the halfway saving operation screen by clicking the command means as a request to read out the halfway-response recording file.
It is also desirable to further provide the call center system with a database server for storing a response recording file used by any of the terminals for recording a response in a response-file-storing database; storing a halfway-response recording file used by any of the terminals for recording a halfway response in a halfway-response-file-storing database; storing a conversation-voice recording file used by any of the terminals for recording the contents of a conversation in a conversation-voice-file-storing database; retrieving a halfway-response recording file from the halfway-response-file-storing database and a conversation-voice recording file associated with the halfway-response recording file from the conversation-voice file-storing-database at a request made by any of the terminals for use in completion of the halfway response stored in the halfway-response recording file; and retrieving a response recording file from the response-file-storing database at a request made by any of the terminals in transmission of the response stored in the response recording file to a caller.
Any of the terminals is allowed to request the database server to retrieve a halfway-response recording file from the halfway-response-file-storing database and a conversation-voice recording file associated with the halfway-response recording file from the conversation-voice-file-storing database. The terminal uses the halfway-response recording file and the conversation-voice recording file associated with the halfway-response recording file to complete the creation of a halfway response recorded in the halfway-response recording file.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention as well as the manner of realizing them will become more apparent whereas the invention itself will be best understood from a study of the following description and appended claims with reference to attached drawings showing some preferred embodiments of the invention.